


The Greater Good

by ElwritesFanworks



Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Discrimination, Gross, Inappropriate Behavior, Inappropriate Erections, Involuntary Behaviour, Isolation, Loneliness, M/M, Mutation, Public Humiliation, Reunions, hacker!Keith, more tags to come
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-15 06:52:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7212337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElwritesFanworks/pseuds/ElwritesFanworks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vaccination is found that stops the outbreak in its tracks, and gradually, society returns to normal. Even carriers have to be vaccinated, but for most people, it's nothing more than a quick injection. A small portion of the population, however, winds up mutated, but still sane/non-dangerous, and looking half-way between humans and special infected. </p><p>Nick leaves his friends in a CEDA camp shortly after he's inoculated, and holes up in a bad neighborhood as the changes take place. Three years later, Ellis saves up and goes on a road trip to track down his friend, but what he finds is not the man he knew...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is gonna be weird but fun to write. If you like body horror, hopefully you'll like reading it too.
> 
> (Hope you like your jockeys horny and gross.)

* * *

The man in the basement apartment was a creep and everyone knew it. For one thing, he was ugly as sin – his back all hunched and his hands curled and gnarled like some kind of animal. His little atrophied legs were always twitching, moving too fast for the rest of him, bouncing in place. None of that was his fault, really, but he made it worse by not looking after himself. How hard would it be to wash that greasy hair, or to shower once in a while instead of just layering on cologne for weeks at a time? Why did he have to shuffle around the building late at night in that tracksuit with the cum stains on it – the sweaty curls on his chest peeking out the neck hole of his white wife-beater, a hint of gold gleaming at his throat. It’s not like you could even kid yourself – could tell yourself nah, nah, the stains right – maybe they’re, like, ranch dressing or something. No. Fucker was always walking around with a half-chub or worse, always huffing and panting and scratching and fondling himself. It was disgusting.

The dude reeked of jizz, old sweat, and cigarettes, and every time he made one of his rare visits upstairs to the laundry room or down the street to the convenience store for a tub of Vaseline and some tissues, and occasionally, packs of beef jerky, everyone in the neighborhood did their best to avoid looking at him.

Some of the kinder souls, like Mr. Solomon whose corner store it was, had initially forgiven him. Word on the street was, he was one of the ‘unfortunates’ – people who didn’t take well to the vaccine. They were rare, and usually you didn’t see bad cases, when you saw them at all. Just a fat guy with a bit too much heartburn, or a bodybuilder type just a bit too big to look human. Less than 3% of the population responded poorly to the inoculations, and even then, the side-effects were mainly cosmetic. It was an easy trade off, when the alternative was the apocalypse. Some people even made it work for them – lots of girls with minor witch mutations wound up in modelling. People made do with their lots in life.

The creep in the basement had gotten a worse case, but little was known about the details, among civilians, and no one could be sure if he was simply a good man with a bit of low-grade jockey in him, or a perv who used his disfigurement as an excuse to beat off in public. Gradually, the good will dried up and everyone lost patience for him – even Mr. Solomon who, after catching him humping a magazine rack, told him to find a new place to shop from then on.

If the isolation bothered the guy, he didn’t show it. He just stayed hidden away in his apartment more and more often mumbling to himself and giggling periodically. If you stood outside his door you could usually hear him going at it – that or laughing like a lunatic. Still, he always paid his rent on time – electronically. After Solomon banned him, he started ordering groceries to his house. Pretty soon, the only evidence he lived in the building at all was that, once every couple of weeks, food would arrive, or he’d put out his garbage. When it was really hot out, he’d hang out by the pool in the back – the landlord didn’t maintain it, so it mostly went unused, the water green and scummy. He’d lie on a deckchair, hand in his pants, and chuckle to himself until someone came out and threw trash at him or yelled and scared him away.

After a year or so, the man stopped being anything more than a minor annoyance – part of the scenery, the urban decay that was slowly destroying the neighborhood. People had other problems – drugs, domestic violence, unemployment… a creeper with an exhibitionist streak no longer made the news.

No one really considered how this might make the weirdo feel, but if they did, they probably would’ve looked at the evidence and decided that he must’ve liked being alone. After all, he made no effort to change himself, to act appropriately. He obviously didn’t care about things like ‘friends’ and ‘neighbors.’ They’d be hard-pressed to pinpoint what he did care about, beyond masturbating and eating cheap takeout which, judging by the steady supply of crumpled Kleenex and empty boxes from the Chinese place down the road piled in the dumpster, were assumed to be his two passions.

Whatever, a perv was a perv, and in this neck of the woods, they were a dime a dozen. The only thing people cared about is that the guy didn’t show up on any registries – didn’t touch little kids, didn’t rape. So he was nasty and gross – there were worse things in the world. Living through the apocalypse had taught people that.

With that in mind, the neighborhood ignored him, for the most part, and he was allowed to exist, in the margins, a footnote in society. An afterthought. A sleaze. It worked well enough for them, and for him, for nearly three years, right up until the repairman came and interrupted the status quo for good. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big thank yous to everyone who commented/kudos-ed/read this so far  
> you're all rad
> 
> another short chapter for now - they'll get bigger soon
> 
> also in this fic, a) Keith is alive and b) Keith is admittedly drawing a little bit on Ash from Supernatural (i.e. redneck who is wicked smart, basically) and as such, he hacks government websites for shits and giggles/to reunite his best bro Ellis with the long-lost gamblin' man he misses so much
> 
> hope you enjoy :)

* * *

Ellis sat in his idling truck, eating his way through a bag of Doritos, checking and re-checking the address of the building in front of him. It seemed surreal that after years of searching he’d finally tracked Nick down in this place. He thought the gambler would’ve gone from the CEDA camp to Vegas, living it up like some kind of high roller. Why the hell the loner had chose this shithole of a neighborhood was a mystery.

The CEDA records were mostly kept from the public and if it weren’t for Keith knowing his way around government web security, Ellis would’ve been royally screwed. As it was, his best friend was able to piece together a sort of map that eventually led to the building Ellis was now lurking outside.

Truth be told, now he’d found the place, he wasn’t sure what he’d do when he saw Nick again. Say he missed him? Ask why he left? Mostly, he wanted to hit him for running off like he did. It’s not like he owed them anything official, but damn it, Ro and Coach still kept in touch even when they moved away, and Ellis couldn’t help but think that Nick could’ve at least said goodbye.

He sighed, wiping cheese powder off on his jeans and putting his vehicle in park. He’d survived an apocalypse. This wasn’t that big of a deal.

Still, he felt awkward as shit when he walked up to the front door and found it locked. Unsure what to do, he scanned the list of buttons by the intercom and found one labelled ‘SUPER.’ He pressed it, and when the man answered, he tried his best to sound official.

“I’m a mechanic – uh… repairin’… repairin’ an appliance. I kinda need to get in.”

“Which apartment?” the man answered gruffly.

“Uh, I’m here for a guy named Nick?”

“Nick who?”

Ellis recited the surname Keith had retrieved from the man’s records. The superintendent snorted.

“No one visits that creep ‘cept his delivery guy.”

Ellis’s lie crumbled in the face of such blatant disbelief. Nick always had said he’d make a shit poker player.

“Look… he’s a friend, okay? A friend from… before. I ain’t seen the guy since quarantine – just lemme in.”

The superintendent took his sweet time answering, static crackling on the line.

“Right, the guy lives in the basement apartment. If you haven’t seen him in that long, you’ll probably be surprised… and not in a good way.”

Ellis frowned at that, but didn’t dwell on it as the door unlocked and he made his way towards the stairs to the basement. He’d guessed a while ago that Nick probably had some kind of reaction to the vaccine – bad breath or boils or something equally undesirable. The guy always was vain as hell.

The stairs leading to the basement were badly lit and the whole hallways smelled of urine. Ellis wrinkled his nose, but kept walking until he came to a dingy, crooked door. The paint was peeling on it in big, curling strips, and the young man reeled for a moment as the sight and smell combined to take him back into memories he tried his best to keep buried. He steadied himself and shook his head.

“That’s all over,” he told himself quietly, and raised his fist to knock. That’s when he heard it – a faint, haunting giggling that chilled him to the core.

“No way,” he swallowed, throat suddenly tight and dry, “can’t be.”

His free hand slipped into his pocket and withdrew a butterfly knife – homemade with parts Keith got off the internet. He felt safer, having something on him. For once, he reckoned he had a good reason why.

He flipped it open and narrowed his eyes, steeling himself as he struck the door firmly.

“Nick? It’s Ellis. Open up, man.”

The giggling stopped. There was a great deal of shuffling behind the door before the unmistakable voice of the conman answered him.

“Go away.”

Ellis hadn’t exactly been expecting a red carpet or anything, but the venom in the older man’s tone startled him.

“Hey, dude, it’s okay – I know you probably got a weird rash or somethin’ from the vaccine – it don’t matter! C’mon, I drove for days to see you!”

The giggling started up again, but louder. Angrier.

“A rash, Ellis?”

The sound of a lock clicking open, and then the creaking of unoiled hinges, echoed as the door began to open.

“How’s this for a _fucking rash?”_

Ellis’s jaw fell in shock as he stared at the occupant of the apartment in growing horror and understanding. All rational thought went out the window at the sight. If he’d been using his head, he would’ve tempered his reaction – said something kind – no doubt Nick felt bad enough already. As it was, he reacted with gut instinct, and said the first thing that popped into his brain.

“Sheee-it!”


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Nick refused to let Ellis into his apartment. Instead, they moved to sit by the scummy pool behind the building. Nick moved skittishly, rocking slightly, squinting in the sun. He apologized for the blatant erection tenting his faded velour track pants. Ellis didn’t comment – he could see by the way Nick scowled that he was miserable.

The gambler looked like shit in a whole lot of ways, but mostly it was his height that threw the Southerner for a loop. He was shorter, now, all hunched over and crouching. It wasn’t as extreme a deformity as on a fully mutated jockey, not enough to truly make him look inhuman. It was just the right amount to make him look ugly, creepy, and unsettling.

The laugh didn’t help. The involuntary tic, and thankfully, one that sounded more human than the one Ellis remembered from his nightmares, tore from Nick’s throat ever thirty seconds or so. He grimaced and picked at a crusty stain on his pants.

“Of all the fucking outcomes,” he declared, “I’d rather be a fucking boomer than this bullshit.”

It was weird, Ellis mused, that Nick’s voice was pretty much the same as it used to be.

“So… uh… how’ve you been?”

Ellis felt bad as soon as he said it, because Nick looked at him with such contempt he damn near withered on the spot.

“How do you _think_ I’ve been?”

The Georgian nodded.

“Shit, right… sorry. Just… well, to be honest, I half came here wantin’ t’punch you for leavin’ and now I don’t reckon I blame you at all. This sucks, man.”

Nick let out another reedy giggle and fixed his eyes on the pool, where a mangy squirrel was trying and failing to drink from the toxic slop that had once been water.

“Yeah,” the older man sighed. “Yeah, it… sucks. Look, I gotta… go out, so…”

Ellis frowned.

“Out?”

“Yep. Gotta go see a man about a dog. And by man I mean CEDA representative and by dog I mean my parole officer.”

“Parole? Aw, hell Nick, did you get arrested again?”

“What? No! Medical parole. Gotta make sure I can live independently – not in some kind of an institution. They’re tracking the mutations, making sure they’re not getting worse.”

“Y’mean… they could…?”

“Weeeeell overalls, they don’t know. That’s why the _super special scientists_ are keeping tabs on me.”

Ellis couldn’t help but smile then – the dry tone of voice, the miserable comment… it was like the old Nick was back. He shook his head.

“I missed you,” he confided. “You’re a mean son of a bitch, but I did miss you.”

“Good for you,” Nick snapped, and giggled again. “Sorry. I… guess I missed you too. I… don’t exactly have a wide circle of friends right now. Anyway, I have to leave, so unless you want to come with me, you should probably go."

“I could give you a ride, if you want. Truck’s out front.”

Nick shrugged a deformed shoulder.

“Beats public transit, I guess.”

“Right, come on then – I’ll introduce you.”

“To who?”

“My truck, dummy,” Ellis laughed. Nick shook his head.

“Of course. Why did I, even for a minute, suspect you wouldn’t consider your car to be a person?”

Ellis ignored the sarcasm and the caustic tone with practiced ease and led the way back through the building to where his pickup was waiting.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

Nick fidgeted in the passenger seat as he gave directions to the clinic. Both men struggled to ignore the conman’s boner, which, if Ellis was being honest, was more disconcerting than the freakish giggling, now that he’d had time to acclimatize to both. At some point, Ellis decided there was only so long that one man could awkwardly side-eye another man’s dick, and he cleared his throat – the sound too loud in the uneasy silence of the truck.

“You… uh. You got a problem there, Nick?”

The gambler swore and folded his arms over his lap in an attempt to hide it.

“One of the joys of being a jockey,” he spat.

“I don’t remember them actually havin’.. y’know,” Ellis blushed, staring straight ahead at the car in front of him, hands tight on the wheel.

“Hm. I’m pretty sure their dicks fell off. Or wore off. Or something.”

“Wha – why?”

Nick squirmed again and recited what a medical officer had told him.

“Walk around with an erection for too long and you’ll fuck up your blood supply. Necrosis, followed by auto-amputation in the form of your junk falling off. Spend all your free time rubbing one out and you’ll chafe yourself to the point of permanent damage.”

“Jesus…” Ellis breathed, blanching in horror. “Yours isn’t gonna fall off, is it?”

Nick shook his head.

“Not if I can help it. But yeah, it chafes like a motherfucker. Bleeds a lot. Blisters… friction burn… what I’m saying is, I’m not just popping a boner because I’m sharing a vehicle with you. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Ellis shook his head.

“I wasn’t gonna!” he said hastily. “I didn’t think that you –”

“Relax, overalls. I know. Take a right here.”

Ellis pulled up to a run-down clinic and parked in the tiny adjacent lot. One of the building’s front windows was boarded up where the glass had been shattered; the other housed a sign reading:

INFECTED PAROLE/TREATMENT - CEDA-APPROVED

Nick swung his short legs out of the car and dropped down, landing in a lopsided crouch and giving his cock a brief feel before he could stop himself. He giggled madly and turned to meet the redneck’s eyes.

“You don’t have to come in if you don’t want,” he said.

“I don’t mind,” Ellis shrugged, and followed at the older man’s heels.

The waiting room was attempting to look sterile and inviting, but failing a bit. The linoleum was yellowed, the chairs creaked when you sat in them, and the air conditioner buzzed loudly in protest at having been turned on.

Nick presented a card to the disinterested woman at the desk, who told him to head right in, and left the Southerner behind. Ellis tapped his feet on the sticky floor, humming to himself quietly. He reached for the nearest magazine and thumbed through it, finding an article about fishing lures that caught his interest.

He wondered if Nick had ever been fishing. A city boy like him probably hadn’t. Ellis wasn’t much good at fishing – he talked too much – but he knew his way around a rod and reel. Keith had introduced him to hand-fishing one summer and he’d found it much more enjoyable. Wrestling a catfish out of muddy river water while it bit down on your arm was a heck of a lot more his speed than sitting quiet in a boat all day. You could catch a big one being loud as you pleased – some of ‘em were so mean they’d take you on no matter what – and you could cook ‘em on the bank, deep fried or cooked in a pan with butter…

Ellis hadn’t done it since the outbreak was contained. The idea of blindly sticking his hand into a hole and having something bite it didn’t hold the same appeal anymore.

The next article was about a three-legged rescue dog that saved a little girl who’d had a seizure, and the one after that was about women’s vaginal health. Ellis skimmed the first one and skipped the second, and came to a brief editorial.

“What Infection Taught Me about Life and Love,” he read aloud, and studied it more closely. The writer, a woman, had been given the vaccine with her husband and kids after surviving the outbreak. He promptly mutated, and was now somewhere on the Boomer spectrum. She talked about dressing his sores and helping him with his gastro-intestinal issues, and how hard it was.

_‘It broke the kids’ hearts at first – that Daddy was gonna be sick forever. I cried for a month. But then I thought, hey, we’re lucky – we survived. My sister lost two of her kids in the outbreak. We lost our Mom. My husband lost his Dad. We made it, us and our two daughters, and here I was crying because my husband needs to chug bottles of antacids sometimes. It was a problem of perspective – I didn’t realize how lucky I was to be alive and to still have him.’_

“Huh,” Ellis remarked. The woman made a lot of sense. He knew he was grateful to be alive – he thanked the Lord every time he woke up in one piece. He was glad Nick was alive, too, even though he was sad the guy was suffering. They were both safe – they’d made it.

“You’d think more people’d be happier about it,” he mumbled, and turned the page. He stared at the glossy photograph of the family – a pretty blonde in her mid-thirties, two buck-toothed kids in pigtails, and the husband – bloated and mottled, stuffed into sweatpants and an enormous stained t-shirt. They were holding hands – him and his wife.

It was pretty cool of them to stay together, Ellis decided. He couldn’t imagine just throwing a loved one to the curb over something that wasn’t their fault, but he could see how people might be upset by such a reminder of sickness, and by having to treat such debilitating conditions at home. Nick had only been in his car for fifteen minutes and the interior reeked like sweat and old jizz. A lot of people wouldn’t put up with that, probably.

 _Mamma always said I had a nurturin’ personality,_ Ellis reflected. Always bringing home stray cats and half-dead possums been hit by cars and shit when he was little. Nick reminded him a bit of one of those wheezing animals, blood flecking their fur and mouth, wary-eyed but hopeful that Ellis was there to do good, even if that good was just to put them out of their misery. Nick had no friends, no future… he was all alone.

Gradually, an idea began to take shape in Ellis’s head. He smiled softly to himself as he formed his plan. It’d be perfect – and it’d really, really help poor Nick.

When the gambler came shuffling back into the waiting room – his erection visibly absent and his arm dotted with needle marks from where he gave a blood sample and got a booster – Ellis waved to him and smiled brightly.

“Feelin’ better?” he asked and Nick grunted. The two men relocated to the truck and were on the road before Ellis spoke up with his venture.

“Are you allowed to travel, Nick?” he asked. Nick snorted.

“Where would I go? Nobody wants a walking cum-stain visiting their establishment.”

“I meant, if I invited you somewhere, could you go?”

Nick furrowed his brow.

“Where?”

“Home, with me,” Ellis grinned. “You could get away for a while – come stay in the country. I know you don’t like it but it ain’t so hot this time of year. You could eat all the food you want, and see my auto-shop, and even meet Keith, if y’want to…”

Nick opened his mouth for some caustic retort to come out, but fell short. He floundered for a bit, then spoke, haltingly.

“You… you’d want me to? I’m not exactly fun to be around, kid.”

“You’re alright,” Ellis shrugged. “Y’don’t have to say yes –”

“No! No… I’d… I’d like to,” Nick admitted. “If it’s fine with you.”

“It is.”

“Great.”

They drove in silence for a bit.

“When could we –?”

“We can leave tonight if you can be ready by then.”

Nick nodded, eyes shutting in relief. Even the country sounded better than where he lived now.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “I can do that.”


End file.
